


why

by zeitgeistofnow



Category: The Outsiders - S. E. Hinton
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Gen, Gun CW, I wrote this for school, Kinda, dally reminisces
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-18
Updated: 2018-09-18
Packaged: 2019-07-14 02:52:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16031462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeitgeistofnow/pseuds/zeitgeistofnow
Summary: thoughts captured moments before disasterorwhy





	why

Dally’s been on the streets for years now, in New York City, and, now, in Tulsa. New York was taller than Tulsa, with more skyscrapers and less gas stations on mostly desolate roads. 

He couldn’t say which he liked better- New York was tougher, lonelier, bigger, and it made you feel so  _ damn  _ small, especially when you’re nine and wandering the subway to get away from your dad. But sometimes you’d look up, or climb up the side of a building and look at the streets and the lights and the people laughing and smoking and driving tuff cars, and for one short second, you’d feel invincible, like you could take on the  _ whole world  _ from up here. Then you’d see a girl running away from someone leering from a bar window, or someone getting mugged or the fuzz putting their hands on the holsters, cornering said tuff car and you’d start thinking about how easy it would be to jump from up here- a plus of being a nobody eleven-year-old is that no one would care if you disappeared. New York was like that- ups and downs and ups and downs, like the roller coasters he used to go on when he was really little. 

Tulsa is flatter- literally and figuratively. There aren’t any skyscrapers, just uniform boxes that people call houses. There aren’t those moments where Dally’s simply awed by the magnitude of everything around him, that people could  _ make  _ these things, because there’s nothing awe-inspiring in the suburbs. 

But there’s the gang- Dally’s never really had friends, per say. He’s had girls who he’d meet for drinks and guys who he’d meet for drinks elsewhere, but those weren’t really friends, just kind of hookups who he’d meet on the street a year later and nod at vaguely. Smoke and kisses and sharp, sharp smiles that promised to show you everything you don’t want to see. Dally wouldn’t say he loves the gang-  _ wouldn’t really say he’s capable of love, because really, after this long, after what he’s  _ seen,  _ he can’t be _ \- but he’d protect them with his life. He told Johnny that one time, when they were both on Dally and Soda and Ponyboy’s couch, and Johnny’d widened his eyes and said, “Nah, you can’t really mean that,” and laughed quietly, and Dally’s laughed too, but.  _ But what am I without you? A washed out greaser who's been on the streets since he was eight and in and out of jail since he was ten? A hood? Nobody?  _

Dally doesn’t have a future, a fact he’s been reminded of for years- the first time the fuzz got him, the secretary at the station had tsked and sighed and said that he’d never get a good job now, and the first and last time he ran into his dad at a bar, Dally sitting on a guy’s lap, his dad had taken another swig from the glass in front of him and said that he’d never get married now, and the pure fucking  _ rage  _ that Dally had felt then had told him that he’d never have a future. 

He doesn’t care.

He doesn’t care, and it comes out in everything he says, in the way he straddles the line between hood and greaser-  _ don’t think he doesn't notice how Ponyboy looks at him, don’t think he’d stick around if it wasn’t for Johnny _ \- in the way he talks to girls, how he talks to everyone-  _ because he can hear his dad in his head, telling him to go talk to some nice, polite girls, and so he does-  _ how he handles human life-  _ it doesn’t matter, we all die someday, why does it matter if it’s now or then?  _

Life isn’t really a touchy subject for Dally- nothing is. He’ll do and say what he wants because he knows that his life ended seven years ago. He’s not bitter about it- he deserves it, he thinks, he’s heard that he has enough times, and when you hear that as many time as Dally has, especially when it starts when you’re only nine, how can you not believe it? 

Johnny didn’t deserve it. Johnny didn’t deserve anything in this fucked-up world, but that’s not how it works. Life happens to every single person, and it doesn’t look at you and place you where you should be, Dally thinks, because no, God’s up there, playing goddamn Russian roulette with our lives. And Johnny lost. 

Dally thinks about all of this as he leans against the lightpost, playing with the unloaded gun and staring at the cop cars circling. As one of the fuzz stops the car and gets out, hand on their holster, Dally lazily lifts the gun, pointing it at the cop's leg, and as the cop raises his gun, Dally thinks about everyone he misses, because that’s why he’s here, isn’t it? He’s here because he misses his mom, and his dad, and all of those boys and girls he fell a bit in love with, before he left New York, before he froze and cracked and broke into a ton of tiny little sharp, sharp shards, and all of the  _ people _ he’s met, all of the ones who were alive, and laughing and crying and sometimes making Dally believe that there was a reason for all of it, maybe, and Johnny, of course Johnny, because that’s why everyone will think he’s doing this, but that’s not why. 

As the cop shoots, Dally smiles. 

_ His life was already over. _


End file.
